Ghana’s Audit Service Report on the Government’s COVID-19 Expenditure

The Africa Center for Democracy and Socio-Economic Development (CDS-Africa) as part of our mandate to promote democracy as a critical input, linked to the pursuit of socio-economic development and transparency in all spheres of governance takes keen interest in Ghana’s audit service report on the government’s COVID-19 expenditure for the period of March 2020 to June 2022.

We are concerned about the ¢10 billion of the ¢21,844,189,185.24 COVID-19 funds spent on budgetary support instead of direct COVID-19 activities. This is a case of a clear misapplication of the COVID-19 funds contrary to the provisions of the public finance management act.

In addition, we take advocacy notice of the infractions report by the auditor general in respect of the disbursement or the expense of 11.7 billion spent on direct covid activities. We will expend all our advocacy efforts to support the auditor general to recover or retrieve all misapplied, misappropriated, and unsupported COVID-19 expenditures.

To this end we make the following advocacy demands and recommendations:

1. The Office of the Special Prosecutor must take interest to investigate, retrieve and/or prosecute where possible, individuals sited for misappropriation and misapplication of the GH10billion on government budget instead of direct COVID-19 related activities.
2. His Excellency the President whose anti-corruption record stands unimpeached must provide every impetus for the special prosecutor, auditor general and related agencies to ensure and initiate reform measures to address the perennial abuse of public funds by public officials and institutions sighted for misappropriation, misapplication and unsupported expense of public funds are dealt according to law.
3. All Citizens, must take active interest to protect the public purse by supporting the advocacy effort of civil society seeking to protect the public purse.

As part of our stated advocacy on this COVID-19 expenditure report, we have attached the full list of the infractions sited by the auditor general with the names and amount as the way of drawing public attention to the conduct of institutions, agencies or the individuals involved.

God bless Ghana!

Dr. Frank Bannor 

Senior Research & Policy Analyst

CDS-Africa

Dr. Abena Boateng

Director of Research

CDS-Africa